Our good friends at Fablecroft have completed the ebook re-issue of Glenda Larke’s Isles of Glory trilogy. with the final volume, The Tainted. This a a very fine fantasy series. You can get all three books as follows:
I note also that Glenda’s latest series will be launched in March with The Lascar’s Dagger, which is getting fine reviews already (even if there is a cloak on the cover — sorry Gav…).
This morning I uploaded three more books from Muse It Up. They are:
Our Canadian friends have sent us three new books:
The busy little British small press, Fox Spirit, has a new anthology available. Shapeshifters is the second book in their Fox Pockets series. Both books feature a lot of talented young writers. In order to encourage you to follow the series, we are offering the first volume, Piracy, in a cut-price bundle with Shapeshifters. What does the fox say? She says, “buy my books, please”.
I’ve been busy doing the Wizard’s Tower accounts for December and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at business in the bookstore over the year. Which books were you actually buying? Well, six books in particular stood out. (I’ve left out our own books because they are obviously going to sell well.)
In sixth place is Lori Selke & Djibril al-Ayad’s anthology of stories about the future of identity, Outlaw Bodies.
Equal fourth were Aliette de Bodard’s Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella, On A Red Station Drifting, and a brand new book, Desirina Boskovich’s anthology of Finnish fiction, It Came from The North.
In third place is the only other book from The Future Fire, Fabio Fernandes & Djibril al-Ayad’s anthology of post-colonial SF, We See A Different Frontier. Gardner Dozois was waxing lyrical about this one in the January Locus.
Second, on the back of a successful promotional campaign, is Tansy Rayner Roberts’ award-winning debut novel, Splashdance Silver. I hope everyone who bought it comes back for the other two books in the series.
And at number one is the magnificent collection by Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath.
It will probably come as no surprise that the publisher who did most business for us in 2013 was Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s Cheeky Frawg. Thanks for putting out such great books, folks.
Second and third places in the publisher stakes go to Prime Books and Aqueduct Press respectively. While they didn’t have any stand-out titles, they have an awful lot of very good books. Do check them out.
The latter part of last year turned into a total disaster, schedule-wise. If I make any resolutions for 2014 they will all involve not over-committing myself as much in future. That is, of course, easier said than done.
I try not to make promises about when books will be ready until I am pretty certain that they will be ready then. Having said that, I have been doing some work over the Holidays to try to catch up while things are quiet.
Most importantly, the copy for Airship-Shaped & Bristol Fashion has been formatted and is ready to go off to Joe, our book designer, as soon as he’s back from his vacation. It will be a relief to get that one out of the door.
In addition I have Apocalypse Array, the final volume of Lyda Morehouse’s AngeLINK series, assembled and ready for corrections. That takes a while as there will be a huge number of scanning errors to fix, but progress has been made.
I’ve spent time yesterday and working on another book project that I’m very excited about, but can’t tell you about yet.
There will, of course, be more books from Juliet McKenna, but she’s still in the midst of family Christmas so I need to wait for her to surface before I can promise anything.
And then there’s the more speculative stuff, that I really should do something about, especially as I was talking to people about both books at World Fantasy. Less blogging, more work.
This is the time of year when most online stores are pestering you endlessly about the sales they have running. You maybe wondering why I am not doing this. Well partly it is because I suspect you are as fed up of sales-mania as I am. The main reason, however, is that I let the publishers set prices in the store. That’s because of Amazon and their price-matching policies. They like to be the cheapest store around. If they were to notice me running a sale, they would probably drop their prices to match, and they might not bother to put them back up again. As they have no control over what price Amazon sells their books at, publishers worry about this sort of thing, so I only drop prices when they ask me to.
That reminds me, however, that we do have Tansy Rayner Roberts’ award-winning debut novel, Splashdance Siver, available very cheaply until the end of the year. If you’d like to take this opportunity to sample the first volume of the Mocklore Chronicles, you have only a few days left.
One of the main goals of any small press is to get the fiction you publish recognized alongside work published by the bigger companies. As small presses often do anthologies, one of the ways that they can do this is to have stories from those books chosen for Best of the Year collections. Gardner Dozois has recently released details of his Best of the Year collection for 2013. The cover features one of my favorite pieces of Jim Burns artwork, but what really caught my eye was the fact that two of the stories in it came from We See A Different Frontier, an anthology of post-colonial SF from The Future Fire, edited by Fabio Fernandes & Djibril al-Ayad. Well done chaps!
Those stories are:
Oh yeah, that’s one author who uses non-binary pronouns, and one who is famous for stories about a trans woman. *Fist pump!*
Sharon Kae Raemer has sent us the second and third books in her Schattenreich series. This far we have:
Every since the Internet started, I have been worried that big business and government would try to take control of it away from ordinary individuals, to the detriment of small businesses and minorities. It has taken a while, but that now appears to be happening in the UK. I make a point of getting my Internet service from a small, business-focused ISP, but most people in the UK will get their home and mobile service from large utility companies, and they are starting to find that sites are being blocked.
It is all done with the best of intentions, of course. For a long time now, tabloid newspapers and other purveyors of Moral Panic have been complaining that the Internet allows children access to pornography. As public displays of pornography are generally only available in tabloid newspapers, and apparently the ladies toilets of hip London restaurants, Something Must Be Done.
So, the Government passed the usual sort of Something Must Be Done Act, and accordingly something largely useless was done. ISPs agreed to filter out “porn”. Lots of people who know stuff about computers said that this would end in tears. No one took any notice because Something Must be Done and we had to Think Of The Children. Now we are suffering the consequences.
A lot of the problem is that people don’t know what is being blocked, or why. I suspect that the support staff at the ISPs don’t understand the system very well, and don’t have much ability to fix issues. It may well be that companies have been buying third party software that they don’t fully understand, and which may contain proprietary features that they are not even allowed to query.
The results, however, are pretty clear. Chaos is being caused. Lots of people are upset. It is not hard to see why. O2, possibly uniquely, have provided a website through which you can check whether your site is blocked or not. I tested some of my sites, most importantly the bookstore, which is rather important to me from a business point of view. This is what I got back.
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That didn’t worry me too much. The site does, after all, encourage people to spend money. I can see parents wanting to restrict access to such things. But just to be sure I checked the competition. Here’s what I got for Amazon.
As you can see, there is a difference. It is not clear what that means, and O2 does not provide any explanation. But the only explanation I can come up with is that kids can be blocked from buying anything on both sites, but they are blocked from browsing mine, whereas they are not blocked from browsing Amazon. Given that they are likely to sell all of the books that I sell, I don’t see why that should be the case. Indeed, O2 appears to be giving preferential treatment to a big, powerful company.
Just to be sure, I checked a few other bookstore sites. They all came up similar to mine. Even Waterstones.
So clearly the list of companies with powerful lawyers that O2 is afraid of and prepared to make exceptions for is quite short.
When queried on this, O2 tend to hide behind bureaucracy. Their Twitter account points people at this document which talks about how mobile Internet providers have got together to agree on a censorship scheme. However, that doesn’t explain in any way how these censorship decisions are made. Instead it talks about sites being, “classified suitable for those aged 18 and over”. Any site which is not so-classified may be subject to parental blocking.
As traffic on Twitter today has shown, many, many sites are being classified as subject to parental blocking. Those include the Wizards’ Tower Press site, Salon Futura and Emerald City. I checked with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to see what they think ought to disqualify something from being views by people under 18. The list is here. What of this am I actually guilty of? Strong violence or horror? No. Actual sex? No. Discriminatory language and behavior? I hope not. About the only think I could think of that might warrant such a classification is the occasional use of “fuck” or “cunt”.
Whoops, now this site is going to go on the block list.
Part of the problem is that the classification scheme for Internet censorship has only one cut-off point, at 18 years of age. Film censorship has several: 12, 15 and 18. It turns out that you can do almost anything you would do in an adult film for 15-rated films, except show actual sex and use “cunt”. 15+ teenagers using the Internet don’t get that option.
By the way, I did a quick check on Salon Futura. It ought to classify for a 15 rating. It fails the Internet censorship rules because it has a couple of uses of “fuck”. Karen Burnham and Sam Jordison, you are very bad people.
Another problem is that, as I understand it, parental controls are turned on by default. Lots of people either won’t know that they are on, or won’t be able to turn them off. It is opt-out censorship, not opt-in.
Finally, we don’t actually know how most of the ISPs interpret the need for parental controls. Where we do, what we see is horrific. The guidelines that O2 pointed to are for mobile providers. Home Internet providers do not use the same rules. BT has published a list of the categories under which parents will be able to block access, and it goes well beyond what the BBFC would do. For example, parents are able to block off access to the official websites of pop groups (but not to websites of sports clubs), to sites giving fashion and beauty tips, and even to search engines. Perhaps most controversially they can block sites on the grounds that they provide “sex education”. This can mean something as seemingly obvious as teaching “respect for a partner” and, inevitably, “gay and lesbian lifestyle”. It doesn’t mention trans lifestyles, but I’m betting they are covered too.
What exactly does “gay and lesbian lifestyle” mean? Well, it is standard homophobe code for anything that presents being gay or lesbian and in any way normal or acceptable. It is Section 28, or the new laws in Russia, being given to parents to implement in their homes. Does anyone ever ask to censor sites that portray “heterosexual lifestyle”? Of course not. And by the way my “trans lifestyle” includes eating, sleeping, reading, doing housework, running my businesses, and indeed everything else that I do because I am guilty of Living While Trans.
Here too we have come full circle. Teenagers desperately need advice on sex. They need support if they think they may be one of QUILTBAG. They need to know the risks of sexual contact. Parents are often the last people they will go to for such advice. The Internet has been a valuable resource for very many of my young trans friends. So we start by saying, “Will No One Think Of The Children”, and end by putting kids in danger. Well done, government.
Anyway, I did say at the top that I would appreciate some assistance. Most companies have not been as helpful as O2 and BT. With many of them there is no way to check whether your site has been blocked except by trying to access it over a connection supplied by a specific provider. Nor, indeed, is there any central point where you can complain if you think that your site has been unfairly blocked. So I’m hoping that UK readers will be able to test my various sites for me using their own connections and report back. I am particularly interested in cases in which sites are blocked outside of the parental control system, and where my bookstore is blocked but Amazon and other larger competitors are not. Please report in comments if you notice anything. And thank you for any help you can give.
Yes folks, other people might have to wait until the 25th for their messiah to be born, but we have one right now. I am talking, of course, about Messiah Node, the third novel in Lyda Morehouse’s legendary AngeLINK series, which I am honored to be reprinting. I don’t want to say too much about the book, because you should all be reading Archangel Protocol and Fallen Host first. However, there is a blurb for the book, so you’ll know that Mouse, Page and the Archangel Michael are all involved. Also Satan and his newly discovered Antichrist, Emmaline McNaughton, are busy bringing about the Apocalypse. There is an actual messiah too. Elijah turns up to make it official. She is Michael and Deirdre’s daughter, Amariah. That’s not going to go down well with the churches.
The book will be available through the usual outlets in due course, though as they are now all terrified about accidentally selling porn as well as accidentally selling pirated material they are getting more serious about checking new titles and at this time of year they may be quite slow doing it. In the meantime, the book is of course available from your friendly, neighborhood ebook store.
Santa lives near the North pole, right? In fact he lives in Far North Finland. You can go and visit him there, if you are so inclined. Therefore I assume that the jolly fellow who has just delivered a fabulous anthology to my bookstore is not Jeff VanderMeer in a fake beard and a fur-lined red suit, but Santa himself. Who better to spread Finnish culture to the world?
Thus we have, It Came From The North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction, edited by Desirina Boskovich. It is a reprint anthology, and some of the material may be familiar to you. Johanna Sinisalo has contributed an excerpt from her novel, Not Before Sundown (Troll); “Elegy for a Young Elk” by Hannu Rajaniemi was in Subterranean; and “Watcher†by Leena Likitalo was in Weird Tales. If you are a serious Finnophile you may even have books like The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy and various English-language special editions of magazines put out by Finnish fandom. However, I’m prepared to bet that there will be material in this book that is new to you because there is material in it that is new to me.
It is excellent value, and will introduce you to a whole lot of fine writers that you have never been able to read before.
There’s no way of getting around this. Lots of people (including me) are releasing really cool books in time for the holidays. I’m just going to have to pimp them all. Sorry.
First up is the latest in the Twelve Planets series of mini-collections by fabulous Australian women writers. This one is Caution: Contains Small Parts, by the one and only Kirstyn McDermott. She of the Pointy Stick offers four short stories which, we are promised, “will haunt you long after their final pages are turned.” Yeah, that would be Kirstyn alright.
Also, talking of Kirstyn, a new episode of The Writer and The Critic went live last week. Mondy is still tweeting, so I guess he survived the recording yet again. I must give it a listen. I do so enjoy his screams.
I’m still busily adding new books to the store. Here are some more titles from our Canadian friends, Muse It Up:
It has been a while since Prime Books sent me anything new, but these two should cause a lot of excitement.
Firstly, it being the season, Paula Guran has put together an anthology of re-imagined fairy tales. Once Upon A Time contains great stories by the likes of Theodora Goss, CaitlÃn R. Kiernan, Tanith Lee, Genevieve Valentine, Jane Yolen and many others.
And secondly, we have one of the most talked-about collections of the year: Kabu Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor. I’m absolutely delighted to have a book by Nnedi in the store. Do check it out.
Our new friends in Canada are continuing to send us their back catalog. I have just added five more books to the store. They are:
I’m on my way to Toronto on business, and to see Kevin who is there for SMOFcon. While I’m traveling, you can feast your eyes on the above. Lyda has the final draft for proofing, so I expect it to go into the store soon after I get back.
We do. And patriotism too, apparently. Specifically we have Sunshine Patriots, a 15th anniversary edition of Bill Campbell’s satirical military SF novel. Just click on through and look at some of the reviews it got when it first came out. And only £1.90 as well.
The podcasts of the latest BristolCon Fringe readings are now available, and they contain a wealth of exclusive material.
First up is Ian Millsted, who reads “The Traveller’s Apprentice”, a story that will appear in Airship Shaped & Bristol Fashion as soon as we can get the book through production. (Guess who is the blockage there?)
Headlining the evening was Jonathan L. Howard who gave us two readings: a short story called “Cowboy Kim”, and the prologue of the next Johannes Cabal novel. Both of these were also exclusives. “Cowboy Kim” was written for the event, while the new cabal novel won’t be out until next year. Jonathan also reveals the title of the book in the podcast.
My first reaction on hearing “Cowboy Kim” was to suggest to Jonathan that he submit it to some major magazines. It is a very good, darkly funny, examination of the possible future of entertainment TV. But it turned out that the story is based somewhat on a Devo song called “Big Mess”. Jonathan has been in touch with the band who have given him permission to use their material, but he doesn’t feel comfortable actually selling the story.
What we have done instead is make an ebook of the story available as a free download of the story available with a purchase of Colinthology, the charity anthology we created in memory of Colin Harvey. Jonathan lives in Keynsham, the same small town where Colin lived, and he has a story in Colinthology as well. This offer is only available through the Wizard’s Tower store (because those big name stores only allow you to associate one file with each stock item). 100% of the money received from sales of Colinthology go to Above & Beyond, the charity for which Colin volunteered.
Here is the podcast of Ian’s story:
And here is Jonathan, plus a short bit of Q&A with both writers at the end.
The next BristolCon Fringe reading will take place on Monday December 16th. The readers are Kevlin Henney and Joanne Hall. Jo will be treating us to the first ever reading from her forthcoming novel: Art of Forgetting : Nomad. Details of the event are available here.
Finally, here is Devo performing “Big Mess”. Thanks guys!
Why look, it is the first of the month again. That means a whole lot of magazines becoming available, in particular the new Clarkesworld. And just look at that line-up: E. Lily Yu, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Someone is doing a great job bringing diverse voices to market, eh?
Talking of Clarkesworld, while I was putting #87 in the store I discovered, to my shame, that in the rush of World Fantasy and Kevin being here I completely forgot about #86. Sorry Neil… Anyway, you can buy that one now too. It has a new Robert Reed story, which is always good news.
Finally I have issue #2 of The Dark, the new dark fiction magazine from Sean Wallace and Jack Fisher. Unlike Clarkesworld, The Dark is not available online at the same time as publication, so if you want it now you need to buy it.
And, of course, buying these magazines, rather than reading them for free, means that they have money to pay their writers, which is a very good thing.